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Rh the tyrant hot within him, and he came down into the dungeons in person, attended by all his guards, that he might with his own hands slay this child, who, it was said, had been born to be his destroyer.

To the King's amazement, however, he found that the child was not a boy at all, but a girl. Had Kansa been less wicked and tyrannical he would have rested here. A girl could hardly, at the age of twelve, be the slayer of a man. And the prophecy had pointed distinctly to a boy. But evil men are blinded by their own wickedness. The very unexpectedness of the event enraged him, and he put out his hand to seize the babe by the foot, and dash it to pieces against the prison walls. As he touched it, however, to the astonishment of all present, the seeming child slipped from his grasp, and high above their heads rose the shining form of a goddess. "He who shall slay thee, O King, is even now growing to manhood," she said, mockingly, "in the village of Gokool on the far side of the Jumna," and then, as they looked, the radiant being faded away, and none could tell even the direction in which she had disappeared.

But wrath and mortification filled the heart of Kansa the Tyrant, and for many a long year there-after he knew no rest, in his burning zeal to out-wit the gods, and end the life of the Child Krishna, ere yet He should be old enough to become his slayer.